Children held under Trump administration’s “zero tolerance" illegal immigration policy

New York City

Immigrant children separated from parents who were detained at the U.S./Mexico border arrive Cayuga Center, a foster care facility, in East Harlem wearing masks, hats and sunglasses in New York City on June 22, 2018. (Photo: Rainmaker Photo/MediaPunch/IPX/AP)

President Donald Trump’s order to stop separating migrant children from their parents spread confusion along the border, with officials still working on a plan to reunite families while sending conflicting signals about the state of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.

Parents who remained locked up struggled to get in touch with children being held in many cases hundreds of miles away. Some said they didn’t even know where their children were. Others said they had been deported without them.

Trump himself took a hard line on the crisis, accusing the Democrats of telling “phony stories of sadness and grief.”

“We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants,” he tweeted.

A senior Trump administration official said that about 500 of the more than 2,300 children taken from their families at the border in recent weeks have been reunited since May.

Federal agencies are working to set up a centralized reunification process for all remaining children at a detention center on the Texas side of the border, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. (AP)